Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig on Spy: 'When it works, it works like jazz'

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The comedy chops of Melissa McCarthy are what’s good about this spy-spoof action romp from writer-director Paul Feig. McCarthy plays homely, mumsy CIA operative Susan Cooper, a boring, deskbound type who keeps in touch, via her headset, with the super-cool field agent on whom she has a hopeless crush: Bradley Fine, played with some dash by Jude Law. But when catastrophe strikes, shy Susan has to get out there and be a real spy herself. And she unleashes a series of lethal zingers while inevitably transforming from sweet-natured co-worker into acid-tongued comic ironist, deriding all the males and snobs who presume to patronise her, including lunkhead fellow agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham).

Our own Miranda Hart plays Susan’s best friend Nancy, and she gets a gloriously surreal pairing with a certain A-list music star. Hart actually carries off her Hollywood debut perfectly well. It’s an entertaining piece of silliness, though it looks like a decision has been made to balance out the female star with some weirdly explicit violence and salty cuss-words, perhaps to reassure the male demographic target audience that this is no wussy chick-flick. But there is a steady stream of good gags, centring on Susan’s sad-unmarried image: she is described as resembling a “flute player in a wedding group”.